All Four Engines On Doc Run Friday Morning

The group restoring the B-29 "Doc" to airworthy condition reached a major milestone Friday morning. All four of the airplane's engines were started and run in Wichita.

"And it's a go! All four of Doc's engines are running," Tweeted Jerry Siebenmark. The engine start was shown live on the Doc's Friends website.

The non-profit restoration group said that the engine run is a major milestone on the way to returning the historic airplane to flight status.

According to the Doc's Friends website, the airplane was delivered to the U.S. Army in March of 1945, just five months before Enola Gay was used to drop the first atomic bomb on Japan. The plane saw service in the 1950s as a radar calibration ship with a squadron called "The Seven Dwarfs," ... hence the name "Doc."

Later, the airplane was used as a target-tow aircraft, and then as a bomb training target itself. For 42 years, it lay on the Mojave Desert while Navy pilots used her to learn to drop bombs on airplanes on the ground.

The airplane has been undergoing restoration in fits and starts since it was returned to Wichita in 2000, after having been discovered in the desert in 1998. The current restoration effort is under the leadership of retired Spirit AeroSystems CEO Jeff Turner.

Doc's Friends promises photos and video of the engine start on their Facebook page "soon".

(Image from Doc's Friends Facebook page)

FMI: https://www.facebook.com/DocsFriends